Category Archives: New Version

August version is all about interface. Numerous small changes aimed to make it more consistent, intuitive and easier to use. There is also a new “find planet” option on the list of planets screen, useful if you remember only the planet name and wish to find it quickly.

– [misc] default names for all fleets (a small thing but it’s more consistent for all fleets to have a default name upon game start).

– [interface] Reports tabs remember their position (requested by players).
– [interface] Find planet by name input box on list planets screen.
– [interface] New input text boxes (rename planet, rename fleet, save filename, etc). More intuitive and consisted with the one you have in your OS.
– [interface] Mouse cursor changes when hovering over a hyperlink. More intuitive and consisted with the one you have in your OS.

I would like to announce a new game I’m working on. It’s a classic, old-school, party-based RPG for PC.

Inspiration:
The game is a classic western RPG inspired by the games from the 90s. Basically, it’s the kind of game I personally find missing nowadays. Light, fairy tale, epic, heroic and slightly humorous. One that does not take tons of hours to complete or require endless grind to progress. Something that caters to players like me who don’t have 40 hours to beat one game but still like to play and have a sort of nostalgia for the way games were made in the old days.

It was inspired by Dungeon Master, Eye of The Beholder 2, Might & Magic 3-5, Crystals of Arborea (a not so well known prequel to Ishar series), GoldBox series (Champions of Krynn, Dark Queen of Krynn, etc).

Mechanics:
Mechanically it’s 100% turn based (so you can go and make tea in the middle of a fight) with grid movement and 90 degree rotation. All this very fast paced, both combat and travel is really fast. The goal was to cut down the boring parts and flesh out the fun parts. Also, there is no loading screen when changing locations or other slowdowns 🙂
Overall, the mechanics are pretty traditional and straightforward with modern additions like equipment encumbrance system.

World and Storyline:
Storyline is a fairy tale, mythical heroic fantasy. You are the good guys on a quest to fight the forces of evil (no moral choices). The world is non linear, with very few locked areas. You basically can go anywhere and do things in different order. In addition you can choose a different set of quests to finish the game (but those are not mutually exclusive, so you can finish all quests if you like). It’s more like a world driven than a story driven. The priority was to make the world feel alive and let you explore it as you wish than follow a linear list of quests.

The game starts when the royal wizard finds out about an old crown that belonged to the royal family since generations. Yet, strangely no one ever heard about the crown and there was just a single mention of it in the royal annals. Upon further study he discovered that there has been cast a powerful spell of forgetfulness of unknown origin which caused everyone in the whole land to forget the crown ever existed. Without knowing who or why went into such trouble to conceal the existence of the crown he decided to investigate it. He summoned a party of noble heroes and tasked them with finding whereabouts of the mysterious crown and the origin of the spell.

July version includes a lot of behind the scenes work, most of it won’t be noticeable since it affects small & rare glitches and make internal mechanics more logical and consistent. In addition a bunch of interface improvements, especially the long requested sorted battle reports.

– [misc] Automated fleets now behave more like manual ones in terms on when those make decisions and move. So those will enter the battle instantly (like manual ones) but will react slower to the operational situation (like retaking planets) since they no longer can see what AI will do next.

– [interface] List of battles sorted. At the top space battles you lost, then stalemates, then won space battles. At the very bottom ground battles (sorted by invasion progress).
– [interface] ESCAPE key closes the current screen, only when nothing is open it opens/closes quick menu.
– [interface] Tractor Beams explanation added to Fleet/Shipyard context help.
– [interface] Ships in reserve count added to Fleet/Squadrons.
– [interface] Minerals used for ships production added to Industry report.

– [fix] Excess industrial facilities on some planets. Also improved the facilities building algorithm to make it a bit more intelligent.

Standardization of Office and Design rooms list of cars. Several people got confused how it works, and indeed, listing all the cars, not only the ones under design, makes more sense. So, it was changed. Translation finished (now the game supports fully EN, DE, FR, RU, PL).

– [feature] Added list of existing cars (not under development) to the Design room list of cars. Also added “Archive car” button to Design screen. This was made to avoid confusion and to standardize Office and Design rooms behaviour.

June version focuses on survivability of Parasites. I got reports that Parasites were getting extinct before the player had the chance to deal with them, especially on higher difficulty levels, which was not fun. So, in this version Parasites got “mind control waves” affecting primitive organisms which makes The Have afraid to even approach Parasites controlled planets. Also they got better planetary defences which makes their homeworld harder to crack by civilized races. During tests Parasites were able to survive in most cases (still their survival is not guaranteed, but even if they did extinct it was happening much later). In addition there are traditional fixes and interface improvements.

– [feature] Parasites got unique ships (before those were shared with The Hive). If you play from the old save they will have the old style ships initially but they will replace those with the new ones.

May version finishes the experimental Empress option (mostly added the alternative graphics) and moves it to regular features. In addition traditional bug fixes and interface improvements.

– [feature] Emperor’s sex moved from experimental to regular features.

– [interface] Added summary of courtiers to the Empire/Summary tab (technically not as important as officers/governors screen, but I suppose some players might find use for it, plus it’s kind of consistent to have all 3 groups of imperial officials listed).
– [interface] Added images for Empress option.

– [fix] Admiral reporting “retake planet” listing wrong planet name.
– [fix] One combat icon not being displayed (no one noticed or reported it because no one knew it should be there :D).

April version focuses on alien armadas. Those got rebalanced and made more logical and dangerous. Especially their behaviour is both more logical and dangerous. Those changes should make armadas a non trivial threat. Also added new ironman mode “Superstrong Alien Armadas”.

– [feature] Added Ironman mode “Superstrong Alien Armadas” (Alien Armadas are much stronger (x3); No limit to number of armadas an alien race can send (cooldown still applies)).

– [balance] Alien armadas behaviour changed, now those stop to conquer a planet. This makes them much more dangerous!
– [balance] Alien armadas rebalanced, fewer ships per wave and reversed the waves strength (now the first wave is the strongest and the last one the weakest).

Balance adjustments and fixes. The car costs structure have been changed significantly but I tried to keep overall costs similar to previous versions, so now different car design strategies might be preferred but overall cars should cost the same. Still, if you have an old save and wanted to finish your game under the old rules you can downgrade to v0.22 which can be found under “legacy” Beta branch on Steam.

I would also like to thank all the people who report bugs. Especially the small trivial ones, which are very easy to fix and which exist only because I didn’t know of their existence. So a big thank you to all the people who take the time to report them! You are a great help.

March version is out! Introduced ironman modes to make the game harder for people who desire it so. For example “Surrounded by Idiots” ironnman mode makes all imperial officials less competent and harder to get rid of. All ironman modes are cumulative so you can choose any number of those and they all combine. In this version there are two ironman modes “Surrounded by Idiots” and “Surrounded by Thieves” and most likely there will be more in future. Also traditional interface improvements and one experimental feature.

– [feature] Ironman modes introduced (intended to make the game harder, can be enabled upon game start via Advanced Customization options).
– [feature] Added Ironman mode “Surrounded by idiots” (all imperial officials get 2 rolls for competence and the LOWER one is used; firing a courtier costs 6 PP instead of 3 PP).
– [feature] Added Ironman mode “Surrounded by thieves” (all courtiers and governors have a 75% chance to start with additional +2 Corruption; money lost due to corruption is increased by 1/3).
– [feature] Experimental feature “Emperor’s sex” which allows you to select if the ruler is male or female (enable experimental features in options to see it). It’s partially working, but it’s quite complete so most likely in the next version it will be moved to regular features.

This update is intended to upgrade interface and art assets. The requested easier display of squadron bonuses on the screen where you decide on the squadron composition is done now, it shows only the most important core bonuses, for full bonuses use the old Analyze squadron composition button. Also a minor change to events.